Sessions will take place during the mornings at the Museo Tamayo Arte Contemporáneo and at the Museo Universitario de Arte Contemporáneo (MUAC). After lunch participants will be divided into working groups to discuss the topics raised during the morning sessions.

FAIR TRADE: THE INSTITUTION OF ART IN THE NEW ECONOMY

We live in an era of crisis that, according to lmmanuel Wallerstein, is systemic. As a result, the world-system – as a capitalist world-economy – and its main structures of knowledge have entered a period of chaotic transition to some new order, subversive of received truths and universalisms.

Museums need to develop historical paradigms which help us better understand our world. We need to comprehend the present in relation to the past, and think about the possibilities that the future lies ahead. The museum has an obligation to point to certain ways and not others. And that choice cannot be technical nor dictated by formal rationality, but involves what Max Weber termed substantive rationality. When ‘anything goes’ is the rule and the confusion of ideas is general, this choice or set of choices are sometimes perceived as rigid, elitist or dogmatic. How many times have we heard the gloomy voices of those who call for a newly coined type of eclecticism as a way of protecting a pretended democratization of culture? Substantive rationality, however, is exactly the opposite. It is the exercise of reconciling what we learn from science and morality, and always denotes an ethical choice.

In this period of crisis and transition, how do we develop new paradigms? What to do in face of a past we do not recognize ourselves in and a present we do not like? What is the role of the ‘museum’ in the contemporary world? Is there any alternative to the ‘modern’ museum or to that responding to the culture of the spectacle? We would like to think that there is.

Day 1: Museo Tamayo Arte Contemporáneo

LEARNING FROM CRISIS

As museums look at the present political and economic landscape and its implications for the coming years, we see this moment of uncertainty as an opportunity to look toward the development of different possible models for management and exchange within public and private institutions.

KEYNOTE SPEAKER

Enrique Dussel – Philosopher and founder with others of the movement referred to as the Philosophy of Liberation. Professor in the Department of Philosophy at the Iztapalapa campus of the Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana (Autonomous Metropolitan University, UAM) and also teaches courses at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (National Autonomous University of Mexico, UNAM)

SESSION 1

Michael Govan – CEO and Wallis Annenberg director LACMA, Los Angeles

François Piron (respondent) – co-founder of castillo/corrales a shared office space and collectively-run gallery initiated early 2007 by a group of artists, curators, critics and writers.

SESSION 2

Osvaldo Sánchez – director, Museo de Arte Moderno (MAM), México

Dmitry Vilensky (respondent) – artist and coordinator of Chto delat/What is to be done? Saint Petersburg

Chto delat/What is to be done? was founded in early 2003 in Petersburg by a workgroup of artists, critics, philosophers, and writers from Petersburg, Moscow, and Nizhny Novgorod with the goal of merging political theory, art, and activism. Since then, Chto delat has been publishing an English-Russian newspaper on issues central to engaged culture, with a special focus on the relationship between a repoliticization of Russian intellectual culture and its broader international context. These newspapers are usually produced in the context of collective initiatives such as art projects or conferences.

Day 2: Museo Universitario Arte Contemporáneo (MUAC)

OFF-CENTER CENTERS

Latin America and the growing off-center centers, such as Southeast Asia, the Middle East and Eastern Europe, offer interesting examples of both public and private funding initiatives within their art institutions. Examples include the use of traditional State/public models that are being re-energized for positive programmatic results; while others include private local organizations that have exercised influence on the expansion of international institution exchange. As artists, collections, museums and other cultural resources from the off-center centers become increasingly known within Europe and North America, new possibilities have increased for collaborations, exhibition sharing and development, as well as cross-context intellectual capital and fund-raising.

Within the current context of institutional fragility, these exchanges offer the possibility of greater mobility of cultural resources. These negotiations can be developed in a manner less focused on economic factors and rather on fair trade as a step toward a future reciprocity of cultural wealth. New models will need to emerge in this process, whereby public and corporate roles are re-signified to achieve a new balance. Through these discussions, the CIMAM conference hopes to generate creative thinking about the global resources that we all look to productively share.

SESSION 1

Cuauhtémoc Medina – Independent critic and curator

Galit Eilat (respondent) – curator and founding director of the Digital Art Lab, Holon and co-editor in chief of Maarav. Teacher at Tel Aviv University in the Department of Film Studies SESSION 2

Each session will feature a speaker presenting a 50 minutes paper, followed by a respondent drawing out particular lines of thought for a 20 minutes period. Following, participants will be divided into working groups to discuss the topics raised during the morning sessions. Each working group will be conducted by 2 moderators. We expect these workshops to be places for the cross-fertilization of ideas and the building of relationships, allowing people-to-people contacts, and providing delegates a chance to discuss the issues arising away from the formalities of the plenary sessions. After the second group meeting, each working group instructor will offer a compilation of their conclusions and recommended actions. This format is not designed to force consensus, but to find common grounds of shared experiences in which differences are acknowledged and respected. Over the next days, a drafting committee will meet to consolidate recommendations into a summary report that will then be emailed to members and posted on CIMAM’s website. The report is also intended to feed into the themes for the Conference in the following year.